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The Lobotomy Files: Inside the Mind of Roman Tritz

12/11/2013 11:34AM

Roman Tritz was one of thousands of WWll veterans who were lobotomized by the Veterans Administration. The nation forgot, but Mr. Tritz remembers. WSJ's Michael M. Phillips reports. See the complete project at WSJ.com/LobotomyFiles.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... I ... was thirty years Roman tricks and he alone ... twice a day ... the key Street kitchen across Wisconsin ... old timers job they can set their watches by ten thirty a nice ... breakfast ... I ... to the servers and other customers ... he seems like the quiet quirky old guys stuck in the way ... when he does talk is usually about being the target of government conspiracy ... the Hague with that ... my battery operated by ... the ... time ... but they don't know as the Roman flew combat missions to and will work too ... he came home to worsening psychiatric symptoms ... and on July first ... nineteen fifty three ... doctors from the Veterans Administration put him under ... keep them on the bottom ... to do here ... the viewer ... for some are new to recover all or why ... for her daughter apparel ... for telling the true color shot ... we'll work to mythology says American boys came home victorious married their girls and put the war behind them ... moment this is evidence that wasn't always the case ... need to government records and interviewing families ... the Wall Street Journal has found that the Fed to the ministrations Labonte mice hundreds of World War two bets ... would return from overseas with serious psychiatric conditions ... over when Sarah June ... with the surgeon ... it ... is true ... the Department of Veterans Affairs and has no record of its remodeling program ... the musty files and covered by the Wall Street Journal and National archive film is that when people first nineteen forty seven ... to September thirty and nineteen fifty ... da doctors in the bottom eyes fourteen hundred and sixty four a veteran ... the records show another four hundred and sixty six the ala Bonnie's outside that period ... and it's like the hundreds of other vets went to the procedure before antipsychotic drugs came on the market in the mid fifties revolutionizing mental health care ... romantics is one of the very few still alive to tell the story ... um only boys from last moment in American military history ... teacher mentor and guide him entry to the commission ... this is your PC or operations and ... may have to go when you get closer ... Roman club on a farm in Portis Wisconsin ... meaning of flying even as he helped his parents with economists ... he joined the Army Air forces and learn to fly a B seventeen bomber ... from a base in England he flew thirty four combat missions over enemy territory ... dodging anti aircraft fire and German fighters ... her ... for error ... prone ... local police ... gave her one ... from the seventeenth ... annual fodder Tohoku looking ... for work ... the seventeen channel ... of course the pre twenty oh nine until ... Friday ... more Korean ... women live there ... things ... were going great ... he came home to Wisconsin and wars and with a clean bill of health from the army ... in the late nineteen forties Roman started hearing voices and asking how play ... it's clear this family in Austin in nineteen forty nine ... they haven't committed to the VA hospital in Tama Wisconsin ... I think ... that's partly why my ... mom and dad felt ... kickbacks ... that he ... committed ... I ... for the safety of ... the family ... yet ... David Merrell was a psychologist and training Apatow movie a ... time when Madison had few answers ... at that time there was no ... treatment were really that was effective at all ... with the psychotic patient ... psychiatric hospitals ... which were still crawled in with the leftover patients who've worked through it ... the backwards were filled with patience the world ... of touch with reality ... the in very primitive conditions ... over four years the doctors put momentum dozens of rounds of electric shock therapy ... the injected insulin to put him into temporary coma ... they sprayed him with powerful jets of water ... for more and more ... who knew when to fall ... provincial treatment ... and to and from what I'm about to start treatment succeeded in bringing back many sick people to go to hell ... however there are a number of patients who relapsed after shark bait ... many of the patients and the threat of added that buys I can say ... operation can be performed under local anesthesia yet if a patient is sufficiently clock to ... nineteen fifty three ... you see a surgeon cut into Roman skull and sliced an Earl fibers in the front of his brain ... an operation much like the one shown in this nineteen forty one footage ... at the time ... to be believed achievement was the best Oprah psychologically disturbed fats such as Roman ... Dr Merrill was among those who recommended Rome and the Botany ... decision he now questions ... in one of those things where you accepted that ... because there was the only thing that could be done ... the bodies brought relief to some patients ... the radical surgery left of them and helpless and vacant ... many ... including Roman suffered seizures ... Bowman sister has never forgotten how her brother looked to be after the operation ... and the way to go ... to pass that up to see my brother ... and ... I ... can ... visualize it yet that he was seen to be and so much pain ... he was to sink in the rioting in pain ... I was very heartbreaking ... to see that ... who ... there ... were only two ... UUP has to do so when ... you need to and from what can you imagine ... I ... Peggy and pray who help me ... Romans five more years in and out of the hospital ... he finally settled on the cross for a working machine shops ... now ninety ... his home is the one momentum of our ... lives on social security in the small annuity ... in a room that order I ... the Tory run ... contrary ... and in the theater ... the mental illness shadow cement the way ... Bowman imagines FTI conspiracies in his troubled by what he calls his magnetic frame ... program ... coordinator for the FBI ... will get up in it ... she she ... each day moment carries on as routine finding a way to live with the damage done by war ... by mental illness ... and perhaps the medicine itself ... oh and by virtue of Pier one time ... another guy who knew What and I can tell who your head in you he from you know ... I told them ... the new stuff ... so it's not the dollar ... there continue ... not too late for me ...